


Tiger's Eye

by fElBiTeR



Series: Finding Comfort In Chaos [4]
Category: Alex Rider (TV 2020), Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Alex Can't Ever Catch A Break, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon-Typical Violence, Field Trip, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, Humor, Mission Fic, Spies & Secret Agents, Unfortunately For Alex, Whump
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-21
Updated: 2020-08-21
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26026633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fElBiTeR/pseuds/fElBiTeR
Summary: Post-Point Blanc, MI6 doesn’t contact Alex again, as promised. Alex has experienced enough trouble for a lifetime.Funnily enough, several weeks later, trouble has its own way of finding Alex Rider in the form of a school field trip and one Yassen Gregorovich.
Relationships: Yassen Gregorovich & Alex Rider
Series: Finding Comfort In Chaos [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1817281
Comments: 9
Kudos: 93





	Tiger's Eye

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello, welcome to yet again, another new and crappy fic in this series! if you haven't read at least hiraeth and tiger's eye interlude previous to this, you're about to be veryyy confused, so I recommend going to those, first! (again, you DON’T have to read dereliction of duty for anything else in this series to make sense)
> 
> no yassen for a while, unfortunately :(
> 
> enjoy!!! 💞

Alex sits on the end of his bed, staring at the necklace in Tom’s hands. He still doesn’t quite know what to make of it all. He appreciates the gestures of goodwill. He really does, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t wary of the motivations behind Yassen Gregorovich’s actions. Several packs of frozen peas in Alex’s freezer, a six-pack of Coke in his fridge, pain medication on his desk, and the oddest of all, an unpretentious necklace, not too bright in color or extremely expensive or shiny, several amber pieces of Tiger’s Eye strung together on with a wheat chain, made of perhaps silver, platinum, or palladium, Alex thinks.

Shamefully, Alex didn’t do anything more than stare at all the items individually and think about his lack of both precaution and common sense from throughout the night. He should have called MI6. He should have phoned MI6 _immediately_ after the fiasco with Julius, and even more so after Yassen shot the clone and killed it. Him. Them. Julius. Alex isn’t quite sure anymore.

What he _is_ sure of is that he probably should _not_ have popped open the tab on the can of Coke he wrestled from the six-pack that very morning and proceeded to drink from it like any other normally grocery bought can of Coke. But he did. And it wasn’t poisoned. And he didn’t die. So cheers to that.

If Yassen had wanted to kill Alex, he would have done it in the hundreds of opportunities Alex presented him. He wouldn’t have intervened with Julius. He would have just let Alex fall down the staircase and die an embarrassing death. Therefore, Alex didn’t think that these little items—gifts or trinkets or tokens of apology, maybe?—had been tampered with, rather, they seemed like ordinary items that Yassen probably popped out to buy after Alex had a panic attack all over him and proceeded to go back to sleep like there wasn’t a dangerous world-class assassin sneaking around his bedroom. All ordinary except for the rather eccentric necklace, that is.

Why waste a perfectly good six-pack of Coke? And that’s why Alex’s hands are currently wrapped around a can, bright red logo and chilled and looking like another regular fizzy drink, his last one from that pack of six. Except it isn’t regular at all. It was a gift. From an assassin.

He takes a sip and relishes in the cloyingly sweet taste of the carbonated beverage.

In Alex’s defense, he has none.

“Yep, it’s made of Tiger’s Eye,” Tom concludes, breaking the silence. “You have a good eye for this stuff, mate.” He tugs his signature beanie a little lower, adjusting it momentarily.

They’ve both just been mucking about in Alex’s room before supper, still in their school uniforms. After getting blatant approval and encouragement from Jack, Alex has been inviting Tom to hang out a lot more lately and having him over for dinnertime, as well. He knows that Tom’s parents aren’t the funnest people to be around right now.

“Thanks,” Alex says. “Ian taught me.” And by that, Alex means that Ian took him to visit a friend from The Gemmological Association of Great Britain back when he was about twelve, and maybe Alex even took a couple of classes in gem identification and nomenclature. It’ll be fun, Ian had said, the same way he said Krav Maga and learning to snowboard would be fun. Instead, he had just been training Alex to be a spy, all along.

Alex can’t even ask Ian if this was what he wanted for him, being pulled out of school for two weeks, nearly dying multiple times, and meeting an assassin who has treated him better than anyone from MI6. It’s an unfortunate thing that Alex can’t ask Ian anymore, with him being six feet underground and all.

“So, um, I’ve read that wearing a Tiger’s Eye necklace around your neck can help with solar plexus chakra build up and that it’s a pretty powerful stone. It also helps with manifesting success and wealth, I think? So it’s essentially sort of a good luck necklace or for protection,” Tom explains, fascinatingly poking at the pearl-sized stones.

Alex stares at him.

“What?” Tom asks, defensively, still clutching the necklace. “Gems are cool. Gemstones are niche. I like gems.”

“Why don’t you keep it, then? I’ve just had it lying around for weeks, gathering dust. You can have it. You like gems and I don’t really wear jewelry, anyway,” Alex suggests. “It’s perfect.”

Tom hastily shakes his head in refusal. “No, no no, definitely not. If someone gifted you a bejeweled necklace, you can’t just give it away, Alex, especially not this one. You need all the luck you can get.”

“Cross our fingers that MI6 stays away, yeah?” Alex sighs, feeling a spark of annoyance thinking about Alan Blunt’s grey face, followed by a vindictive flash of rebellion at the thought wearing a necklace given to him by an enemy of the state. “Never mind then, I take it back. I’ll keep the damn thing.”

Tom passes the necklace over, and Alex sets his can of Coke down on the desk beside his bed before taking the chain into his hands, looping both ends around his neck, and clasping them together at his nape.

It fits perfectly.

Scarily perfect, like it’s been tailor-made to his measurements.

“So, how do I look? Dashing?” Alex tilts his head upwards to show off the necklace. The chain is a touch cold against the back of his neck and the stones are not too heavy on his chest, weighty with a presence, but not impairing any small movements.

“It has a lot of,” Tom pauses, conflict visibly in his face as he struggles to search for the proper word, “charm.”

Alex shoots him a look. Tom gives him a similar one.

They both dissolve into peals of laughter, smiles cracking wide across both their faces. 

“This is so stupid,” Alex admits after his laughter fades into a faint wheeze. “Maybe I would wear it if it were smaller, but—”

“—it’s just too eye-catching, isn’t it? I agree, mate,” Tom nods, faint signs of chuckles spilling in between each word.

“Eye-catching,” Alex repeats, fighting down another bout of laughter threatening to bubble over.

“I said what I said,” Tom grins. He spins around the chair at Alex’s desk.

Alex huffs.

“You’ve never told me, by the way, but where’d you get it from? Someone who fancies you? Or a secret admirer?” Tom wiggles his eyebrows suggestively, drumming his fingers on the desk.

“Umm,” Alex says, quite eloquently, hints redness flushing the tips of his ears. Yassen? A secret admirer? He shakes his head vehemently, dissipating the thought.

“Classified, then? Alright, I get it, I get it. Keep your secrets,” Tom says, giving him a stare that says _this isn’t over_.

“Thanks,” Alex sighs. “It'd be nice if you could just continue not mentioning it to Jack? It’s kind of complicated.” He really doesn’t know how to explain it to himself, let alone Tom or Jack. What can he even say? That the dangerous assassin who killed his Uncle Ian but also saved Alex from a homicidal clone of himself and a tricky flight of stairs was creeping around Alex’s bedroom in the middle of the night and left him a couple of trinkets for healing? That he’s realized that if it wasn’t Yassen sent to kill Ian, then it would have been someone else? That Alex actually liked conversing with said dangerous assassin? That it felt _nice_ talking to someone who actually understood what he went through?

“When is it not complicated with you? Though, that is a pretty wicked necklace, I have to admit.” Tom leans in and nudges Alex’s shoulder with his elbow, but winces at a particularly bad jerky movement when he retracts his arm.

It’s been a week since Tom’s finally gotten his cast off, full of bad drawings and an even worse giant and messy _Alex_ written along the side, and a month since Julius beat Alex’s best mate with a metal bat, taunting him all the while with emotional jabs, as Tom tells him.

Alex is glad that Point Blanc and Julius didn’t ruin his friendship with Tom. Alex is incredibly lucky to have him and Jack at his side, especially since the one who broke Tom’s arm had Alex’s face. It’s a wonder that Tom doesn’t flinch every time Alex gets close.

Alex is lucky enough without the necklace.

“I don’t think I’ve ever said it properly… I’m sorry, Tom. I’m so sorry,” Alex says, averting his eyes. “You getting threatened by Roscoe, Julius, your _arm_ , god, I’m so sorry, Tom—”

“—And you can stop right there,” Tom cuts him off, holding out his index finger. “Remember after I got my cast, and I let you scrawl your name all over it in your terrible handwriting? Jack said it best, Alex. We’re family.”

“Thanks, Tom,” Alex says quietly, eyes squeezing shut for a moment.

“I reckon the worst part of it all is that Ayisha still kind of hates you,” Tom adds. “Evil Clone Alex said some rather nasty things to me, so I’m just wondering what he said to her.”

“Me too,” Alex sighs, lowering himself back onto his bed. Whatever it was earned him a rather forceful slap. He doesn’t really think that there’s any way to repair what little relationship he had with Ayisha.

“We can’t exactly tell her the truth and it’d probably be difficult to apologize for something without knowing exactly what he said,” Tom says, furrowing his eyebrows. “Say, what happened to him anyway? You two ran off from the dance rather quickly. Ah, silly question. You’re alive here, aren’t you? I’m guessing our friends from MI6 took care of it?”

Heat rises up Alex’s neck, but he tries his best to force a natural expression onto his face. “Uh, well, I don’t really know what happened? We were fighting one moment and the next, I was running away from the school and I lost him. Or he lost me. Not too sure, but they haven’t really said anything since, so I think they took care of it. Yeah.”

Alex hates having to lie to Tom, but he needs to keep his story straight. The final time MI6 contacted him was actually the day after that whole fiasco, when Alex got home from school, still tired, and Mrs. Jones was sitting with Jack round the dining table.

“Do you have something you’d like to tell us, Alex?” Mrs. Jones had tilted her head slightly to give him a knowing look.

 _Us? Us as in MI6?_ he had wondered, even though it was only Mrs. Jones in his home.

“Not really…?” Alex had answered, genuinely confused for a moment, which probably helped strengthen his claim of obliviousness. “Why?”

“We have reason to believe that Yassen Gregorovich was the one who killed Julius Greif last night, however, we can’t quite confirm it yet.”

Alex shook his head. “I met him for the first time at Point Blanc, like I told you.”

See. Not a lie.

“Alright then, Alex.” Mrs. Jones kept looking straight at him, through her glasses. Jack sat nearby, worry evident on her face. “Remember, Gregorovich is a dangerous killer. He may see disarming at first, but make no mistake. He can kill a person in over two hundred ways, make it hurt very much, and get away with it. He is one of the coldest and most ruthless assassins we have ever had the displeasure of knowing. A natural-born killer, if you will.”

Alex had attempted not to break eye contact with her, keeping his shoulders relaxed and his body loose, removing all traces of tension and stiffness from himself as best he could even though he wanted to shoot her a confused look. Firstly, he’d like to imagine that no one can be a natural-born killer. Secondly, Alex very quickly realized that the Yassen he had been talking to and interacting with sounded very different from the Yassen MI6 knew and loved. And that… maybe Yassen Gregorovich really _did_ have a soft spot for him, for some odd reason still unknown to him.

“Alex. If you ever see him again, run the other way,” Mrs. Jones warned.

“But he won’t,” Jack cut in. “Because Alex is done with this business. Done with all of you. I don’t care if I’m deported or not. We’re done. Alex is done with you.”

Mrs. Jones left fairly quickly afterwards and Jack hugged Alex tighter than she had ever before.

And that was that.

“Oh, they took care of it?” Tom asks, peeking up, intrigued. “Sounds like something straight out of a movie. ‘Where did the body go?’ and then ‘Don’t worry, I took care of it’, y’know?”

“Yeah.”

 _Liar, liar_ , a voice at the back of Alex’s head says. He ignores it.

“Speaking of school, how cool is it that we’re actually going to get to see a Premier League game for Liverpool Football Club tomorrow? Like, can you imagine, out of all the schools out there, _ours_ got a special anonymous donation? I mean, how cool is that?” Tom smiles, excitement written all over his facial features.

“Money makes the world go round,” Alex says, thinking back to how easily Yassen responded when Alex asked him for the reason as to why he killed Ian. For money, he had said, and so casually, too.

Alex touches the necklace around his neck, gently fingering the stiff wheat chain.

“Why don’t you look more excited, mate? You love football. You love Liverpool,” Tom asks, a hint of concern in his tone.

“I’m excited,” Alex says quickly. “I am. I’m also just… I dunno, tired? I’ve got a bad feeling about it.” He really does. It’s a prickle of a sensation in his gut, barely noticeable, but it’s there. He doesn’t quite know why.

“What?” Tom wrinkles his nose. “Bad feeling? It’s just a tour and a football game, Alex. Well, granted, not just any football game, but nobody’s going to get blown up or anything. You should just try to relax and enjoy the rare experience. Think of it as… sort of a reward or positive karma for what you had to go through.”

“You’re right. I guess I’m still feeling a bit off since Point Blanc,” Alex replies, rubbing the back of his neck. Nothing has happened in the last month. MI6 hasn’t reached out to him at all anymore, he hasn’t seen Yassen since that night, and his life has melted back into normalcy. It makes something inside of Alex itch, an irrational, twitchy part of him that’s prepared for some sort of danger, ready to kick into fight or flight at a moment’s notice.

“Maybe if we’re lucky…” Tom lowers the volume of his voice down to a near-whisper, “we’ll even get to see Jürgen Klopp in person!”

Alex blinks confusedly. “He’ll be out there managing the field, Tom, of course we’ll see him in person,” he says.

“No, I meant _in person_ in person,” Tom corrects himself. “Like, up close and personal? Close enough for maybe even an autograph?”

“Oh, you wish,” Alex laughs. The necklace shifts along with his movement.

“But _what if_. Think of the possibilities. Should I bring a special shirt? Or a football? What would we say to him?” Tom’s eyes are gleaming. “What if we actually do meet him, Alex? I mean, come on, man, we’ve got really good seats, too, and a tour _on_ the day they’re playing.”

“You really think we’d have a chance?” Alex wonders, feeling his heart race a little bit faster at the prospect. Jürgen Klopp, professional football manager of Liverpool Football Club, regarded as probably one of the best managers in the world as of now, with his incredible player management, his intense footballing philosophy, highly strategic and demanding, and his unshakable support for his players, as well for his personality and incredibly likable character. Alex tends to agree completely.

“As good as any. Even better, I’d say. What’d they say? Seats booked for the Kop? Or is it Upper Centenary?”

“I don’t remember,” Alex responds. “I don’t think it matters much, seeing as we get to skive off school for a day to watch a football game in the first place.”

“Never in a million years,” Tom says, shaking his head. “This is much better than another boring educational museum visit.”

“I happen to like those,” Alex says defensively. “... Sometimes.”

“Keep telling yourself that, my friend, keep telling yourself. Maybe one day you’ll actually believe it.”

Alex rolls his eyes. 

“Boys, the pizza’s here! Better get in here before I eat it all!” Jack’s voice comes from the kitchen.

“I never want to see another anchovy pizza again,” Tom shivers, standing up from the spinny chair.

“It wasn’t completely my fault,” Alex says as he rises to his feet as well. “The anchovies were entirely your idea.” 

“I’ll have you know I cycled for about three hours total to get to that stupidly massive estate and back,” Tom grumbles, walking past him. A tiny part of Alex twinges in guilt, but he pushes it down. It was a lighthearted remark. No need to ruin things by apologizing again.

They leave Alex’s room, Tom first with Alex following behind him. 

As they pass by the bathroom, something catches Alex’s eye in the mirror. “You go on ahead, I need to use to loo for a moment.” Tom nods in acknowledgement as Alex ducks into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

Alex flicks on the light and turns to the mirror. The necklace looks… it doesn’t actually look as out of place as he thought it would around his neck. The colors sort of match the brown of his eyes, and it is a bit charming, in its own way.

He tilts his head. The necklace tilts with him, catching the dim glow of the ceiling fixture with a band of reflective light, streaking through the stones. 

It’s too blatant to wear in public.

Alex gathers the loose pieces into his palm and tucks the entire thing behind his blue collar and school tie, and the gemstones settle immediately, cold, pressed against the bare skin of his chest. He re-examines himself in the mirror. It’s nearly hidden now, except for the bit of the chain peaking out on the sides of his neck. 

“Alex?” comes from through the door.

He could wear this in public now, Alex thinks. Maybe tomorrow, for good luck, to counter his bad feeling, just in case his field trip doesn’t turn out to be just another innocuous football game.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please be warned: I know less about soccer/football than I know about the uk 🙈 AND I haven’t read all the books so if you tell me that book!alex is a chelsea fc fan I’ll have no clue what you’re talking about :D
> 
> ... I’ve just headcanoned tv!alex as a liverpool fc and jürgen klopp stan becuase he’s shown no interest in football, really, and I know nobody in the football world except for jürgen klopp so TOO BAD, IT’S ALL FOR THE PLOT SO DON'T CRUCIFY ME


End file.
